Cape Town - Double murder accused Johannes de Jager says his decision to dismember the body of Charmaine Mare, 16, was foolish.
While De Jager pleaded guilty to two counts of defiling a corpse, he denied murdering Charmaine on January 11.
In a plea explanation, De Jager said she must have died when she slipped on a bath mat and knocked her head against the edge of the bath.
The trial into the murders of Charmaine and sex worker Hiltina Alexander, 18, started in the Western Cape High Court on Wednesday. De Jager, 48, of Ruyterwacht, pleaded not guilty to murdering the teenagers, and raping Hiltina twice. He also denied robbing Charmaine of her BlackBerry.
The prosecution rejected his plea.
De Jager also admitted he made sexual advances towards Charmaine, who was in Kraaifontein on holiday from Kriel in Mpumalanga.
Charmaine had come to Cape Town to visit her friend, Kristen White, who lived with her mother, Carol, De Jager and his son, Nick.
Carol White, Kristen and Nick went on a cruise from January 7 to 11 while Charmaine remained in Kristen’s house with De Jager.
De Jager said he was supposed to meet the family at the V&A Waterfront at 9am on January 11 and told Charmaine to get ready, but she was taking her time, which frustrated him.
De Jager reversed his bakkie out of the garage and when he returned he saw a fully dressed Charmaine sitting in the bathroom with her cellphone.
“Seeing as she was delaying me and taking unnecessarily long, I grabbed her right arm in the direction of the bathroom door.
“She lost her balance and slipped on the bathroom mat and knocked her head against the rim of the bath. She was motionless,” De Jager said.
He tried unsuccessfully to revive her and then realised she had “fatally injured herself during the fall”.
De Jager said he panicked and did not know what to do. “I took a foolish decision to take her body and hide it in a drain on our premises. She showed no signs of life and I believed I placed a corpse in the drain.”
Two days later, De Jager removed Charmaine’s body but the only way to get it out was to cut her limbs.
De Jager admitted he dumped Charmaine’s torso in an open field in Kraaifontein and her legs on the N2 close to Firgrove.
The first witness to testify on Wednesday was Hiltina’s friend, Colin Jacobs, who identified De Jager as the last person with whom he saw Hiltina alive.
Jacobs said that on May 18, 2008, around 10pm he, his brother, McNeil, and Hiltina had left a bar in Parow and were walking in Voortrekker Road when they spotted De Jager’s white bakkie.
Hiltina whistled to get his attention and later got into the bakkie. Jacobs and his brother waited for her but she did not return.
De Jager’s defence is that he met a man, known only as Johan, in a bar in Parow and they drank together. Johan wanted a sex worker, so De Jager said he knew of someone and fetched Hiltina. They went to Johan’s sister’s flat, also in Parow, drank alcohol and smoked dagga together.
Later, De Jager left the flat. He said he never had sex with Hiltina, despite her making advances to him.
Hiltina’s body was found in the bushes on the N7 near the Frankdale informal settlement. She had been strangled to death.
The trial continues on Thursday.
jade.otto@inl.co.za
Cape Argus